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Bringing Back Yiddish...One Email at a Time

Last summer brother and sister Yiddish enthusiasts Shaul and Shulie Seidler- Feller decided they wanted to spread their love of the mameloshn, so they started the Yiddish Word-of-the-Week project. Mainly a listserv, but also a Web site in development, the project includes weekly mailings that feature a word of the week with an English translation, a link to hear it spoken, synonyms in Yiddish, the etymology, phrases and expressions in which the word is used and even a photograph tied to the word that Shulie, who has contributed photographs to the Forward, shoots in New York’s Yiddish-speaking neighborhoods.

So far, they’ve covered everything from mashin (a machine or automobile) to likht (a light or candle), and have plenty more in store.

The Seidler-Fellers both live in New York. Shaul, 20, is a student at Yeshiva College where he studies Yiddish, and Shulie, 26, is a photographer who works with Jewish Lens, a Jewish photography organization. The duo grew up speaking Hebrew and English, with a sprinkle of Yiddishisms, at home in Los Angeles, but became more interested in the language during the past few years.

To sign-up for the listserv, send an email to: yiddishwordoftheweek@gmail.com or check out the Web site.

Below is an example of what readers will find on the Web site:

Gleybn/Gloybn - גלויבן/גלייבן GLEYB-en/GLOYB-en Verb: To believe.

Pronunciation: Click here to hear a native Yiddish speaker use this word in conversation.

Synonyms: meynen (מיינען); halten (האלטן).

German equivalents: fassen, glauben, meinen.

Etymology: The word(s) derive(s) from German “glauben,” from Middle High German “g(e)loube,” which is cognate with Dutch “geloven,” from proto-Germanic “*galauƀian” (“to believe, to hold valuable or pleasing”). Cf. Old English gelyfan. Weinreich (here and here) explains that the two words are essentially the result of Lithuanian Yiddish’s transformation of the “oy” sounds in gloybn to an “ey” sounds, producing gleybn. Though gleybn can only be used as a verb, gloybn, as you will see below, is also a noun.